


The Opposite Of Falling

by geckoholic



Series: Absolution Calling [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Blindfolds, Consensual Kink, Experimental Kink, F/M, Fear Play, Handcuffs, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-25 07:48:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3802465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/pseuds/geckoholic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>The thing is, after a week or two of almost feeling normal, the comedown is worse than the usual highs and lows.</em>
</p><p>Stumbling into kink, assassins style: the sequel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Opposite Of Falling

**Author's Note:**

> Soooooooo if all goes as planned, this is gonna be part two of three, in an effort to get them from 'we don't know what we're doing but everyone's getting off' to something a little more in the vicinity to safe and healthy. Because I couldn't quite bring myself to just leave them with their unsafe experimenting and walk away, lol. But, uh. Because I'm me and being awful to the characters I love is part of the fun, of course it gets worse before it gets better. Anyway, part three is already being written, although how long it'll take me to post will kinda depend on how much time I'm gonna need to digest AOU. 
> 
> This fic involves an aborted play scene that could potentially be triggering. If you want to know more about that or about the kinks involved, please consult the end notes. ALSO. Please note that the way kink is handled here is somewhat unsafe, and acknowledged as such by the characters. It's done that way on purpose, although, as mentioned above, we're working on that. Do not try this at home, educate yourself before you hurt yourself, and so on.
> 
> This is based on a mix of ~old MCU canon and comics backstory, in total disregard of AOU spoilers. Just so you know what to expect.
> 
> Beta-read by andibeth82, enigma731 (both of whom also helped me a lot with brain storming and reassured me time and time again that this was worth writing and finishing) and tastewithouttalent, my own personal smut wizard. Thanks to all three of you! ♥ All remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> Title is from "Absolution Calling" by Incubus .

He's nine, and he's spent the past six weeks in the illusion of a home. He'd say that it was like when he was a small child, but he's already old enough to realize that the home his parents had given him had never been this perfect. No wonder the Norton family decided he and Barney didn't fit in with them after all; the two of them are a lot of things, but they're miles away from perfect. Even knowing that doesn't lessen the sting of being shipped back to the orphanage one bit.

So here they are, trotting up the stairs yet again to reclaim their old room. It's not the first time, but the Nortons... they felt real. They had felt like a chance, but it wasn't anything more than a cruel dream. Barney knew it from the start; he'd warned Clint not to hope before they left. _They're all the same. Wanna feel like good Samaritans, and then realize they got more than they bargained for. We're broken toys. We'll always end up getting tossed._

Clint keeps heaving his suitcase down the dusty hallway. In front of the door, company awaits: the Duggan brothers, three of them, each one nastier than the last. They had been the second choice for the Nortons, discarded in favor of Barney and him.

 _Look who's back,_ says Gordon Duggan, the youngest.

 _They blew it,_ says Brad Duggan, the oldest, with a wink at Barney. _Or maybe y'all didn't blow it enough?_

The middle brother, Hank Duggan, doesn't say anything, simply backhands Clint across the face. Barney's in front of him in an instant, shoving and pushing, but to no avail; three against two, and the youngest Duggan is still less than a year younger than Barney.

As Clint lies there, pressed to the floor by a madly grinning Hank while Gordon kicks him in the ribs and Brad keeps Barney busy so he can't help, he feels something within him fall away. His face burns hot with both pain and humiliation as more and more boys flock to the spectacle, cheering and howling. He doesn't pay attention to Ms. Klein's yelling as she hurries up the stairs, can't draw any comfort from the fact she'll break up the scuffle in a minute. He doesn't wish for another good foster home. He doesn't even wish to be back at his parents’ farm. He just wants it all to be _over_.

Three months later, he and Barney set foot into another new house, and the man who owns this one looks too much like their dad to offer the tiniest sliver of hope. It'll be their last foster home; four months later, they'll be sleeping under the stars, surrounded by bright fairy lights and the smell of sawdust.

 

 

*****

 

 

Superheroes or not, sometimes their work still requires the more surgical approach Clint and Natasha specialize in. Big explosions are, despite _someone_ ’s continued protest, not always the best solution to every given problem. Tracking scattered Hydra assets, for example, tends to fit into that category.

They’ve been locked onto this girl’s signal for two days now. She’s good; anyone without Natasha’s training and Stark’s tech might’ve lost the kid within the first couple of hours. Wouldn’t have found her in the first place, probably. Sheila Lark is a hacker, and she’s smart, but she’s not yet a spy and she’s no match for their level of experience.

Natasha’s staring at the little red dot on her screen, the tablet propped up on her thighs, her feet on the rental car’s dash. Clint lets her do that without so much as a disapproving glance, too much of him still the opportunistic stray with little concept of belongings or value; he doesn’t care that much about other people’s property. Natasha sometimes wishes she could’ve met him back then, seen what he was like. It’s not always easy to connect the man in front of her with the boy he must have been. But, as usual, she discards the thought as foolish, dumb, sentimental. It doesn’t matter.

They haven’t talked much since they left last night’s motel, but it’s not strenuous or uncomfortable. It’s work. On the job, Clint talks when he’s nervous or worried or knows that she is. Otherwise he does what he does best: he watches and observes. So when he tells her that he’s going to hit the next gas station, that the tank’s almost empty and the three coffees he’s had since their last pit stop are demanding his attention, it’s the first thing either of them have said for a long while. Natasha looks over at him and nods, and he smiles at her, one hand on the open window of the driver’s side door, the other resting on the gear shift. His sleeves are rolled up, and in the bright afternoon light she can clearly see the lines on his wrist, both old and new. The fresh abrasions are almost healed, but the air of calm and quiet he exudes, almost like before New York, still persists.

They haven’t talked about that yet, either. They probably should. She won’t force the issue, though, not if it means risking this. Clint might slip through her fingers again. What they did helped. For the moment, that’s all she needs to know.

He opts for a 7-Eleven a few miles ahead, and she waits in the car, eyes still on the red dot marking Sheila Lark’s position even though it hasn’t moved in a good long while. In all honesty, Natasha expected this mission to rattle him. They know by now that it’s common Hydra practice to pluck wayward kids straight from juvenile detention or buy them out of their youth custody before they’re old enough to make a better choice, and she knows Clint’s been thinking about it, that he’s mulled over this particular _what if_. He‘d been a kid like Sheila, drifting, missing direction, with a unique and potentially useful skill. He easily could’ve pinged the radar of one of these recruiters, and he wouldn’t have known any better either.

Perhaps that’s what makes kids like Sheila so dangerous, and so loyal. They consider themselves saved, have yet to realize they merely traded one form of incarceration for another, their lives no more their own than they were pre-recruitment. At least the Red Room hadn’t tried to be sly in that regard; Natasha never had reason to feel like anything else than a captive.

Another hour of driving through plains and fields, steadily moving towards the blinking dot standing in for a young girl’s life. She will not want to be saved at first, won’t see it as being rescued. Another reason why the two of them were the only possible choice for this mission: no one else on their team would’ve been able to make as passionate a case about free will and second chances.

Clint’s got some practice with that. Natasha, at least, found his pitch quite convincing.

 

***

 

Half a lifetime of undercover missions have caused Clint to hone a bunch of skills he’d never thought he’d possess, and one of the less exciting ones is this: pretending he’s the kind of person who likes _parties_.

By now there must be tens of thousands of kids who dream of becoming an Avenger when they’re grown up, like his generation might’ve dreamed of becoming something like Captain America. (He’s not ever going to admit that there may have been a time when he did that, too. He’s been trained to withstand _torture_. No one will ever know.) As he stands among women in cocktail dresses that cost more than he used to make in a month, even at SHIELD, and men not only in suits but also a fair share of tuxedos, he thinks maybe he ought to write an open letter and send it to a newspaper. Working with superheroes isn’t all action and saving people. It’s also public relations and smiling when Stark – or Pepper, more likely – decides the press is due for an outing.

Funny how there are action figures of _him_ now, and yet he’s still working under orders, pretending to be someone other than himself. The only difference is that he doesn’t bother changing his name anymore; the people he pastes on these days are all still different versions of _Clint Barton_. He has yet to decide whether that makes the pretense easier or harder to uphold.

He scans the room for Natasha, finds her off to the side chatting with Maria, who looks about as uncomfortable as he feels but doesn’t bother to hide it. Undercover never has been her shtick. She’s scary smart and analytical and a born leader in ways that the likes of Tony Stark couldn’t dream to be, but she’s never been good at charade. Their eyes meet and she toasts in his direction, rolling her eyes at… well, everything in here, and then pats Natasha on the shoulder and beelines it to the bar.

Good thinking, that. He could also use another drink or five. Then again, this is work, not fun – even though Stark would want him to think differently – and he doesn’t get _drunk_ -drunk on the job. A new employer doesn’t change that. He pushes his way through the crowd, towards Natasha.

“I can’t recall,” he says to her, “did he give us a time frame?”

Natasha shakes her head. “Nope. We’ll leave when the press does.”

“Great.” He leans across the metal railing that lines the glass front at this side of the room, grips them hard enough to make his knuckles go white, relaxes and flexes again, only stops when she looks down at his hands. He looks up to meet her eyes, smiles a little, hopes it’ll convey something along the lines of _don’t worry, just bored, nothing more_.

She raises her eyebrows, and yeah, figures. Fooling her ceased to be a possibility years ago. His moods swing back and forth like a pendulum, have been doing so for months, and of course she’s noticed. If anything, it might’ve made her pay even closer attention. The thing is, after a week or two of almost feeling normal, the comedown is worse than the usual highs and lows; there’s a sea of bruises, half of them avoidable, offering evidence for the extent of his latest downswing. Clint used to be so much better at this, evening out, or repressing, whatever one prefers to call it. But that’s probably what he gets for having an alien tear his brain inside out; the seams aren’t knitted together quite as tightly as before.

The doors to the ballroom swing open once more, giving way to Thor and Jane, joined by that loud assistant of hers. For a moment Clint thinks Selvig’s with them, the thought conjuring up a vague memory of laying out plans with him while they were both, well, under the influence, and his stomach clenches painfully. But it’s not him. The guy who trails after Thor with a notepad has a press pass pinned to his chest, and, on second glance, the only similarities are the age and the graying hair.

Natasha inches closer to Clint, placing her hand on top of his, and right now he hates the idea that he’s so transparent to her, that she can read him so easily. He draws his hand back from underneath hers and steps away from the window.

“I’m gonna get us drinks,” he says, doesn’t wait for her reply before he begins to weave his way through the crowd again. Work event or not, it’s time to join Maria at the bar.

 

***

 

Natasha lets herself into his apartment unannounced, as she usually does, shaking off the rain before she sheds her jacket. It's been pouring outside, cold and dreary, the kind of weather that seeps into your bones and doesn't let go until you've had a hot shower and a good night's sleep. The TV is going in the living room, muffled noises she can't translate into full, meaningful sentences without paying more attention than she's willing to spare, and it provides just enough light that she sees something gleam on the small table next to his coat rack.

The cuffs. Natasha sends a glance towards the living room and sighs. She knew it was coming, has felt it building for a few days, just didn't know why and how, and she'd rather he'd asked. Maybe she'll make him next time, set a rule that says he has to open his damn mouth to get what he wants. As it is, tonight, she doesn't have the heart to march in there and tell him no. She picks them up.

He cranes his neck when she enters the living room; he's lying on the couch, which is old and ratty and outdated and small enough that he can put his head on one arm rest and his feet on the other. His expression is carefully blank, no anticipation or excitement, reined in, and it doesn't visibly change when she places the cuffs on the table in his direct line of sight. He sucks in a breath, though, between his teeth, his chest contracting. There's a silent question in his eyes when he looks up at her, which she answers with a miniscule nod. He swallows. She pushes at his legs until he turns them just so, making room so she can sit down.

“Next time,” she says, “I want you to ask. Out loud. Use your words.”

Defiance flickers across his face, and she thinks he's going to protest. He doesn't. “Yeah. Okay.”

Natasha leans forward, kisses him, one hand cupping his cheek, deep but slow. When she pulls back, wiping spit off her mouth, he's given up on cool bravado. His gaze lingers on her lips before he meets her eyes, jaw still set but his expression wide open otherwise. He's handing over the reins, waiting for her to tell him how to proceed, and the thought shoots up and down her spine like an electric shock.

She stands, gathers the cuffs, and takes his hand. Any other time, that'd make her feel a little ridiculous – like a scene from bad movie, an attempt to love like normal people. Then again, the very fact that she rarely feels the urge for romantic gestures until she's leading him to the bedroom to tie him up probably keeps them firmly out of the realm of _normal_.

Once in the bedroom, she switches the light on, dumps the cuffs onto the mattress and bats his hands away from his body to stop him from fiddling with his belt buckle. She smiles when he glances at her with confusion. “Let me. Just stand still.”

His eyes dart away from her as she gently rolls up his t-shirt to pull it over his head, but he doesn't resist, dutifully raises his arms and ducks ever so slightly to give her better access. She smoothes a hand down the side of his body, kisses him again, quickly, a reward of sorts. The point isn't to make him uncomfortable, but this whole thing is an exchange, something they're both supposed to enjoy. Bossing him around isn't what makes this fun for her; it's being allowed to take care of him. She's calling the shots, and this is what she wants. What she _needs_ and can't have under normal circumstances.

The worst kind of irony; all the things he's done, all he's been through, and the one thing he can't deal with is someone being _gentle_ with him.

He's staring holes into the ceiling while she undoes his jeans and pushes them slowly down his hips, makes him step out of them by tapping his thigh before she repeats the maneuver with his boxers and bends to rid him of his footwear. He’s still avoiding her eyes as he stands there naked and waiting, arms hanging by his side, his torso a landscape of half-healed bruises and cuts that makes her ache in sympathy. He's hard already in spite of the unease that comes off him in waves, or maybe, she realizes, partly because of it. She's going to do something with that later. _Make_ him look at her, have that be all he's got permission to do.

She takes a step back. “Stop hiding. Look at me.”

It takes him a moment's hesitation and a deep breath, but he does, raises his gaze to hers until their eyes meet. There's uncertainty in them, like he's out of his depth and can't figure out how to process any of this. He sends a quick, pointed glance towards the bed, most likely unaware of the jolt it sends through her body. The cuffs are so pregnant with meaning for both of them that she can hardly understand what all this translates into for him. Natasha would never be able to draw pleasure from submission, she thinks. So much of her life has been defined by other people, and she makes a mental note to tell him, later, when he'll be able to listen, how much it means to her that he trusts her so with this. How giving up control in this context is an act of bravery to her, not a sign of weakness.

She wants to touch him. He shivers when she runs a hand over his hipbone and around his waist, lets it rest just above his ass. With the others, she cups his balls, rolls them in her palm, and that gets her a moan. But he doesn't move a muscle. He's not rolling his hips, isn't thrusting up, doesn't touch himself – he won't, not unless she tells him he can. It's exhilarating, as much as it is a responsibility; there's a fine line here, between challenging his demons and inviting them to overpower him, and she's the one making sure he doesn't tip over.

In order to do that, she needs him to unwind. He's still wavering; if she lets him have his way too early, she's going to lose him inside his head, that much she already realized the first time. She sinks to her knees and closes her lips around the head of his cock, sucking gently, the hand on the small of his back now drawing him closer. He moans again, louder, more guttural, and as her mouth slides down further, back up, back down, she can feel some of the tension drain out of him as simple pleasure takes over. His arm twitches, and she reaches for it, places it on her cheek where he immediately starts to draw tiny circles with his thumb in sync with her head bobbing up and down.

His eyes are closed when she comes back to standing, and she kisses him, both arms slung around his body, drawing him close, waits until he's blinking them open again before she nods to the bed, satisfied with the feral need she sees reflected in his gaze. He resumes the position she put him in the first time without a word and she picks up the cuffs to click them into place. Only then does she strip herself, with quick, mechanical movements not meant to tantalize but to get rid of her clothes as quickly and efficiently as possible.

She settles on the bed with her legs wide and bent at the knee, not missing the way his gaze zeroes in to her cunt before he catches himself, looking at her face. He needn't be so courteous; between her legs is exactly where she wants his attention. As it is, she holds his eyes while she cups a breast, flicks a thumb over her nipple, does the same on the other side in a positively pornographic display, spreading her legs further as she rolls her hips and arches her back. The cuffs clatter on the metal of the bed frame when his upper body sways forward as if of its own accord, and he inhales, gives up on trying to pretend that he's not going to stare. His eyes follow her every move, causing him to shift as she abandons teasing her breasts in favor of going down south. Propped up on one arm, she touches herself with other hand, slow enough to give him a good show but with enough pressure that it's getting the job done. She takes her time, eyes closed, the continued clinking of metal as he strains against the cuffs the soundtrack to a slow but thorough orgasm.

The raw hunger that's painted all over his features when she blinks him back into focus is electrifying. He stares at her like she's something to be devoured and, at the same time, the sun that warms him. His mouth has fallen open just a little on a silent moan, his body tipped forward as much as the cuffs will let him. The muscles in his arm are taut with the unnatural position as much as, she suspects, with the pain that comes from maintaining it. Underneath, his wrists are lined with angry red, the skin chafed, and she feels a surge of guilt. It's pain she caused, even if it's pain he _wants_ ; getting used to that will take some time.

She shakes her head to clear it, smiles at his raised eyebrows and crawls up his body to kiss him again, making sure to brush her cunt against his cock on her way up, letting him feel her wetness. It's not his job to worry about her right now. His reaction is immediate and delicious, eyes all but rolling back into his head, hips thrusting up as he whispers her name. Bracing herself with one hand on the headboard, she spits into her hand and reaches between their bodies, strokes him lazily, too shallow to get him anywhere. Part of her wants to know how long she can keep can keep him suspended like this, hovering right on the edge. She speeds up the pace, works him faster until he's panting and meeting her hand with small thrusts, just to pinch the base of his cock at the very moment she sees his eyes glaze over. He mumbles something unintelligible under his breath, forehead creasing with frustration, orgasm trapped within him at the last second.

She runs her thumb over the tip of his cock, grinning when he flinches away from the touch, and brings it to her mouth to lick it clean as he watches. The next part is an accident; she slides off him with the intention to lie down next to him, a more comfortable position for both of them, but accidentally jams her knee into his side and hits one of the bruises he worked so hard on collecting this past week. He jumps, and she hastens to shift away.

Clint blinks, bites his bottom lip as if in thought. “Do that again.”

It's the first time he's actually spoken since they started; his voice is hoarse and low with arousal, and that helps to wash away her concerns and renewed guilt. He's asking for it. He _wants_ it. She settles into the space left by his suspended arm and experimentally pushes the palm of her hand into the large bruise, a few days old but still a dark, tell-tale purple and yellow. He sucks in a breath between his teeth but he moans, hips pumping at nothing.

“You enjoyed that,” she says, an observation rather than a question, and he nods. He's frowning again, though this time it looks like neither frustration nor desperation, but rather something like wonder at the way his own body is reacting without his conscious permission. She presses again, and he _writhes_.

Her other hand closes around his dick again, flying up and down in the same rhythm as she puts pressure on the bruise time and time again. His hips move in tandem with it. He cranes his neck, holds her eyes, lets her see every wave of pleasure and every twinge of pain that crosses his face. That, somehow, feels like more of an admission of trust, more of a gift than the fact that he's asked her chain him to a bed frame; she's gotten so used to stoic indifference from him since New York, and this is the exact opposite. It makes something in her chest tighten, then expand, paired with the realization that he's not the only one who's vulnerable when they're like this.

She presses harder, gives the bruise a pinch as well. His eyes widen as he squirms away from the source of the pain – instinct, she assumes, not the actual desire to get her to stop – and twists back closer to her in almost the same move. His mouth falls open when his orgasm hits and he pumps upwards into her hand a few more times, body coiling as much as the cuffs allow while he comes in hot streaks all over her hand, falling slack once he's done.

The last thing Natasha wants is to move, but Clint's still cuffed and that's more important. She wipes her hand on the sheets, gets the keys from the nightstand, and makes quick work of freeing him. He peers at her from half-lidded eyes, panting like he just ran a mile and wearing a drowsy grin, looking a little bit like he's drunk.

She throws the cuffs to the floor and gathers him in, just holds on. By the time she forces herself to let go so she can get antiseptic wipes and bandages for his wrists, he's fast asleep.

 

***

 

Rogers snatches Natasha for his ongoing side-mission whenever they have room to breathe; it’s less of a continuous search at this point and more a game of tag. Barnes surfaces, Rogers chases, the trail goes cold, rinse and repeat. But Natasha is nothing if not loyal, and if the Captain calls then she’ll follow regardless of how promising the lead is or how likely – or unlikely – their success. Clint’d offer his help, too, if he didn’t feel like this was _personal_ , not the kind of party you show up to if your presence hasn’t been requested.

And so he sees her off, goes to work just to be reminded that there’s currently nothing much for him to do, hangs around his own place for an hour or two to keep up appearances – mostly towards himself – and then drives over to her apartment. He spends some time tidying up, a nervous habit that only rears its head when he’s waiting on her. Contrary to popular belief, he’s not the slob in their relationship; her place is more likely to be left in a bit of disarray, which he actually considers an achievement. It was downright clinical when she first moved in, not a stitch out of place, like a picture in an Ikea catalog. Now she’s comfortable enough to leave a couple dishes in the sink or her clothes from the other day in a pile on the bathroom floor.

He kills another couple of hours dozing in front of the TV before he gives in and decides he might as well relocate to bed and spare himself the sore back come morning. As he runs through his routine in her bathroom – wash, brush, change – he catches his reflection in the large mirror hanging over her sink, with his shirt off, wearing nothing but long-hanging, ratty sweat pants. Most of the bruises on his torso have faded away; another upswing, when he actually cares about his own well-being. And see, he’s not totally obtuse. He knows his own patterns. He’s caught on to the correlation between the stuff they’ve been up to between the sheets lately and his improved mood.

He runs a hand over the last couple of bruises still visible, starting below his rib cage and running all the way down to his hip, shaded an ugly green and yellow. Maybe it was bound to happen; nothing in his life has been as consistent as pain, being hurt. For pretty much as long as he can remember, someone’s always been around to provide cuts, bruises, broken bones. Getting shot at and having people try to bash his head in is part of what he does for a living. No wonder he’s had some wiring come lose in his brain and reattach itself the wrong way. What he’s still got to work out is whether or not it should bother him.

The lights come on in the hallway, followed by footsteps he immediately recognizes as Natasha’s. He waits, his fingers still resting on the bruise, keeps himself still until she appears behind him, smiling at him through their shared reflection.

Her expression sobers as she zeroes in on where his hand is, what he’s been doing. “Do you... should we drive back to your place?”

“No.” Clint shakes his head, belatedly reciprocates her smile. “No, I’m good.”

She strides up to him, snakes an arm around his torso to cover his and presses her lips to the nape of his neck before she stares back at the both of them in the mirror. He remembers the way she undressed him the other day – unbearably slow at the time, his skin crawling with something he still can’t identify – and holds her gaze as he turns around, drawing her in for a kiss while he undoes the buttons of her coat and slides it off her shoulders, lets it fall to the floor.

He can think of fun things to do in her bedroom too.

 

***

 

They’ve had a long week – small missions, nothing to write home about all by themselves, but even that adds up – and sometimes even their after work lives boil down to changing into something old and comfortable, ordering in pizza, and setting the TV to background noise while they wait for the delivery guy to show up.

The TV gets left to the channel it’s set to when they turn it on, and out of the corner of her eye, Natasha identifies it as one of those evening news programs; reheating the stories of the day and blowing them up with interviews and witnesses and experts. Some ordinary nobodies get their fifteen minutes while the network gets cheap ratings and still calls it journalism.

She’s about to snatch up the remote and change the channel – Clint’s looking utterly bored and not likely to mind -- when she catches the word _SHIELD_ in the reporter’s question. She doesn’t recognize whoever it is they’re interviewing, and curiosity wins out over the uncomfortable feeling that she’s swallowing some kind of bait. So instead of tuning out, she increases the volume.

“Can you tell us a little more about Mallory?” the reporter asks, and the interviewee – a plain brunette in her fifties, her eyes waterlogged – sniffs with feeling before she answers.

“Mallory was twenty-five. She was so happy when she got promoted! She was a pilot, and she had been working for SHIELD for four years, and they put her into an assignment on one of those... Plane-ships? Like the ones that got destroyed.”

“Helicarrier,” the reporter supplies helpfully.

The interviewee nods. Her eyes water further, but no tears are spilling over yet. “She got shot down, just hours before the attack on New York in 2012. It’s not like they tell us anything, you know, but the files are all online now, right? I heard someone went AWOL, one of their own agents, and helped that alien guy invade the... well, that ship.”

Natasha switches the TV off before the reporter can cut in and supply the _alien guy_ ’s name. She knows it’s too late. Clint’s gone pale where he’s been setting up plates for them – she insists they don’t eat straight out of the box, they’re not savages – one of them hovering in midair before he catches himself and sets it down slowly. He inhales, and it makes her think of the tide rolling back on a beach right before it falls back in with vigor, washing away everything that has the misfortune of standing in its path. With Clint, traditionally, the worst of that shock wave gets directed inwards.

There’s any number of soothing phrases on her tongue, but they’ve danced this dance so many times before. He’s not going to listen. He never really did, doesn’t allow himself to buy into verbal reassurances.

“I need some air,” he says, eyes cast down and wringing his hands, and then he stands, walking out on her without so much as a glance back.

 

***

 

What he should do is give it a day or two. He's had coping mechanisms before – not all of them good, or even healthy, but they’ve worked. He's made it through decades of the job without... this. Without the craving that washes over him almost the same moment he stands and runs out on a clearly worried Natasha, who tracks his every move but knows better than to come after him and make him talk right then. She will eventually; if he can't get over it, can't discard it, she'll notice.

So what he actually does is go for a run and an hour at the range, entirely unsurprised when neither helps lessen the tension in every single one of his muscles, or relieve the sensation that's so oddly reminiscent of suffocation. Like he's held down, a death grip around his rib cage. None of that is new. The novelty, now, is that he knows how to get rid of it.

Natasha waits for him in the kitchen. She's sitting here with her iPod on the table and headphones in her ears, foregoing the radio that's sitting on the counter. He appreciates the gesture, the intent behind it, although it's hard not to feel like she's trying to coddle him.

He sits down opposite her, and she takes out the headphones so that they fall down to dangle from her neck. “Feeling better?”

“No.” Clint takes a breath. “Not at all, to be honest.”

The air around them feels charged as she nods, hands folded on the counter in front of her. She looks at him with a face that's kept carefully neutral; no pity, no concern. He doesn't doubt she's feeling both – he would, as well – but if the Black Widow doesn't want to be obvious about whatever's going through her head, she won't be.

“I want to –“ he starts, then realizes they don't have a word for it. She told him he should ask, that he's not going to get what he wants, what he needs, if he dances around it, but he's not entirely sure what he's supposed to be asking _for_. “The cuffs.”

She nods, disentangling the headphones and neatly rolling them up before she sets them aside. “Okay.”

He stays seated until she stands, rounding the counter and holding out a hand to him. He swallows past a lump in his throat, rises, and takes it, nerves flaring. The last time, she'd been slow about it, had him almost ready to jump out of his skin before she even ordered him onto the bed. He wants to ask her to... change the pace, probably, might be the word for it, but doesn't know if he's allowed.

In the end, he stays silent as he follows her to the bedroom, watches her turn the lights on and get the cuffs from where they're stashing them in the nightstand, right next to lube and condoms and a few of her toys. She lays them out on the bed for him to see, alongside with the bottle of lube, and he swallows again.

Her eyebrows knit together as she looks him up and down. “You okay?”

“If I was, we wouldn't be doing this, would we,” he snaps, tone harsher than he means it to be. Her eyes narrow.

For a moment he worries that he overstepped, that she's going to call this off. Instead, her expression softens. “What I'm saying is, are you sure?”

He breaks eye contact, rubs his hands on his jeans; they’ve gotten clammy sometime in the space of the last few minutes, though he can't recall when. “I am. I want this.”

Natasha considers him for a few more seconds, making his skin crawl with anticipation. Then she picks up the cuffs and the bottle and points at the bed. “You know the drill. Strip and lie down.”

Relief runs through him, and gratitude. They seem to be on the same page about what's going to happen tonight. He hurries out of his clothes, climbs on the bed to get into the by now familiar position. She kneels down by his side.

“Tell me what you need. If I'm on the wrong track, going too hard, not hard enough…” Her hand strokes down his thigh, like she's trying to calm a spooked horse. “If there's something that doesn't work for you, or that you don't want, you can tell me.”

It should've long since stopped surprising him, how well she read can read him. Not just him, really; it's part of her general skill set, but with how long they've known each other, he's a particularly open book. Sometimes he hates that. Right now, it's a comfort. And it's mutual, too; she wants to do something new, add something they haven’t done yet, he's almost sure. That's why she's telling him that he can veto, if he so chooses.

When she stands to open his wardrobe and comes back with one of his ties, he's thrown for second – he's already chained up, so what she does she need the tie for – but then he catches up. His eyes. She's going to blindfold him.

She holds it up for him to see, to consider, and he nods. He hadn't thought about it yet, but... yes. He shivers, that familiar sensation of equal parts fear and arousal surging through his chest, making his dick thicken between his legs at the same time as it makes his heart beat faster with trepidation.

She leans over him, clicking the cuffs shut and binding the tie around his head to cover his eyes, presses her lips to his temple. He hears the snap of the bottle being opened, the squelch as she spreads the lube in her hands to warm it. Her fingers ghost over the insides of his thighs, brushing past his perineum and his balls. The muscles in his legs tighten and quiver. He breathes in deep. There's images tugging at the edge of his mind, feelings, memories, but he's come to expect them, which takes away some of their power.

Her hand closes around his cock, tight around the tip and loose further down, letting it slip around just the head in small, quick movements, and he inhales again, forces himself to relax and sink into the pleasure. It doesn't quite work; it's good, but it's not enough, not the kind of stimulation he craves.

He clears his throat, tries to remember how words work. “Can you, uh. I need more. I need – “ He leans forward to glance down his body, where the bruise sat the last time they did this. “ _Please_ , Nat.”

The bed dips as she shifts on it, and he jumps a little when she straddles him. She's still fully clothed, the fabric of her jeans rubbing against his skin; the blindfold exacerbates his other senses, makes everything feel twice as intense. Despite the fact that he already can't see, his eyes fall closed as her lips meet his, settling in for a slow, languid, almost lazy kiss that helps him control his breathing and focus on her. She shifts positions again, running a hand down his chest in small circles until she reaches a nipple, rubs her thumb across it a few times to get it to peak and then digs her nails into it _hard_. He jumps, arcs up into her, a groan swallowed by her mouth on his.

Natasha pulls back. “Liked that?”

“Yes.” He bucks up against her once more to punctuate that, and also in a useless effort to get her to shift her hips a little lower, give him something to push up against; no dice, of course. If she wanted him to be able to hump her, she'd already have let it happen. “Yes, I did.”

“Good,” she says, and then she's moving again, lower, until he feels her tongue lick at the nipple she just pinched. Her teeth close around it, sucking at first then gently pulling it upwards and tweaking. It's an odd sort of pain, sharp and clean, a bit like the prick of a needle but without the burn that comes from piercing the skin. It's fucking _perfect_. His breath catches in his throat. He rolls his hips as much as possible with her weight resting on his waist, hands balling into fists and working in the cuffs, biting his lips to hold back a moan that he knows would end up being entirely too needy, too desperate.

She sits up, plays with the nipple she’s just bit; it's just the pad of her thumb, but on the abused, oversensitive skin it feels like sandpaper. He hears her sigh, sounding pleased, imagines her smiling, before she climbs off him and the sheets rustle as she changes her position again.

The slap comes out of nowhere – a flat hand to his cheek that makes his skin tingle and burn – and his mind goes completely blank for the space of a blink, just to have a cacophony of memories and past sensations roll back in like a tide on the beach. He's at the orphanage, face burning the same way, the kids around him cheering and randomly hurling out insults. He's home, his father standing over him like a menacing shadow. He's back in Algier, chained up in a bathroom, not sure if the smell of stale piss is coming from the room, if he's lost control of his bladder at some point, or if someone... It all mixes with hyper awareness that, in the here and now, he's naked and he's chained and he couldn't get away if he wanted to; goose bumps are spreading all over his skin, making the air drafts coming from his AC feel like something physical, like a strange hand that's grazing him without his permission. He knows Natasha is there, but she's not currently touching him, she's not talking and he can't _see_ her, his throat is too dry to speak and ask her to talk to him. He feels alone, and helpless, knows he's getting lost in the memories and yet unable to do a damn thing to stop it because they're the only images his brain supplies him with, they’re more real than the present. There's a weight on his chest and he can't breathe. _He can't breathe._

A finger brushes over the tip of his cock – her finger, _hers_ , there's no one else here, it has to be Natasha, it has to be – and his body snaps upwards without conscious thought, causing a bright flare of pain to shoot out from his right wrist and up his arm as he strains too hard against the cuffs; abrupt enough that something has to give. He clamps down on a yelp and tries to ignore the ache, swallows hard, doesn't recognize his own voice when he finally manages to find it again. “Stop. I think I might've – fuck. Please. Stop.”

He hears Natasha gasp above him then scramble on the bed; still, he flinches when she touches his arms as she bends over him to take off the blindfold. He’s panting, his heart beating out of his chest and she’s ashen, doesn’t meet his eyes as she undoes his wrists next. As soon as he’s free and able to sit up, he covers his rapidly waning erection with his hands. Her gaze follows them before it flickers back up to his face.

“I’m sorry,” she says, putting the cuffs on the bed behind her back as if she’s worried the sight might upset him, and he shakes his head.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. I – I freaked.”

“Yeah. Because I hit you.” She picks the tie back up, turns the fabric in her hands, looks at him with a concerned frown and leans forward to sweep her thumb across the skin beneath his eyes. “You're crying.”

His left hand – the uninjured one – flies up to his face. She’s right; his face is wet with tears he didn’t even realize he’d shed. A fresh wave of embarrassment rolls through his stomach. “Surprised me, is all.”

He moves away from her and stands, doesn’t have to keep looking at her to know she’s not buying that for a second. The images from his memories flash before his eyes again, like a bad dream that won’t let you go for the first few minutes after you wake, and he fights to keep his breathing under control. The smell of days old piss is still in his nostrils, making him feel filthy. His right wrist throbs. He tries to tell himself it’s probably sprained, but he spent enough time in medical bays and emergency rooms to know better; it’s more likely to be broken. He’ll worry about _that_ tomorrow, though.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he tells her, arming himself with boxers, t-shirt and sweat pants from his dresser, and he bolts for the bathroom.

 

***

 

He’s in the shower for ages, it seems like. Natasha sets about putting away the cuffs and lube, dumps the tie into his laundry bin, reconsiders, and throws it into the trash. She changes into an oversized T-shirt. There’s a book of hers in the nightstand, but her mind is rolling too much for leisure reading. She sits cross-legged on the bed and waits.

She can’t forget the look of cold terror on his face when she took the blindfold off. Over the years, she’s seen him focused and concerned, she’s seen him stare down trials of fire, seen him bleeding and bent, but she’s never seen him _panic_.

The man who strolls out of the bathroom about half an hour later is the one she recognizes; still shaken enough that she’s able to sense it, but calm. He smiles at her, sad and worn, but honest. She knows better than to ask if he’s okay while she stands and pulls the covers back.

He gets into bed next to her, radiating heat, smelling like shampoo and shower gel, and it drowns out the smell of sex that has still lingered in the room. When she wraps herself around him, he tenses, his whole body going rigid, but he shakes it off before she has time to decide whether it’ll be better for both of them if she leaves for the night. He doesn’t even let her move to the other side of the mattress, his hand catching her arm and holding it in place when she tries to draw back and give him space, keep her distance, leave him be, and it’s enough to chase away the fear that, for the first time since they met, he might be afraid of her touch.

The next morning, she wakes to an empty bed.

His bedside clock tells her it’s hardly 8 AM; the spot he vacated next to her is already cold. Her rational mind knows that he’s always been a light sleeper, that this is his apartment and he might just be in the living room with the TV on low volume as to avoid waking her, or going for a run, or getting breakfast and the good coffee from the old-timey bakery around the corner. Doesn’t have to mean anything. Nevertheless, she swings her feet out of bed with a lump in her throat, listening closely for noises or movement in the apartment and not hearing any.

What she does find is a note on the kitchen counter. It says that he’ll be back by noon at the latest, probably bringing lunch, but it doesn’t say where he went. That, too, isn’t unusual; they’re not in the habit of tracking each other’s every step. She goes back to the bedroom to get that book from the nightstand, and settles on the couch.

She hears the key turning in the lock and the front door opening a little past 11:30 AM. Clint doesn’t bother announcing his return. By the time it takes her to dog-ear her page and swing around, he’s standing in the doorway to the living room, looking at her expectantly and with slightly slanted eyebrow, like he’s waiting for her to catch onto something that’ll get him in trouble once she does. The reason for that quickly becomes obvious: his right wrist is bandaged and he’s wearing... a splint?

“What happened?” she asks, but just as soon as the words are out she _knows_. The explanation still hits her like a blow, even though she’s certain he doesn’t mean for it to be accusing.

“Last night.” He grimaces, shifts his stance, as if unconsciously angling his body away from her. “Fractured my wrist. Nothing too bad, but I gotta go in for surgery in two days.” There’s nothing in his expression that suggests he’s angry or resentful; aggravated by the prospect of forced downtime, sure, he doesn’t take too kindly to being put out of commission, but no blame aimed in her direction.

Maybe he _should_ blame her. He trusted her, put himself into her hands, and came away with broken bones. “What did you tell them?”

He shrugs. “The benefit of being a national news item is that people don’t inquire how you got hurt if you tell them it was a job. Probably assumed I either saved or killed someone, I don’t know.” Finally making his way over to the couch, he lets himself plop down, right arm elevated in front of him to protect his wrist from being jarred. “Wow, I feel like my mother. Lying to cover up how I got an injury. Only the way she usually got hers was less –“ Fun, is probably what he means to say, but the exact moment he got this injury neither of them was having _fun_ anymore, either.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him again. She wants to repeat it numerous times, until it’s sunken in, gotten accepted and processed. But he just shakes his head.

“Told you, there’s nothing you’d have to be sorry for. I flipped my shit. All you did was what I asked for.” He reaches for her face, gently trapping her chin between his thumb and index finger; anyone else would earn themselves a flat hand to the jugular for a move like that. “I’m not pissed. It’s okay. We’re fine.”

The smile he offers her when he lets go of her face is as thin and strained as the one he had given her last night, doesn’t do much to put her at ease. But she also doesn’t want to prod, not right now. Straight answers, if they’ll come at all, won’t be available until he’s had a day or two to get his head together.

She leans back into the cushions and reciprocates the smiles, placing a hand on his thigh. She tries to ignore the tremor that runs through him in response; nothing violent, blink and you’d miss it, but Natasha just so happens to be in the business of always catching the fine print.

 

***

 

The surgery isn’t a big deal; Clint’s had much worse. They send him home with his wrist in a splint and a prescription for painkillers, the good stuff, which he doesn’t have filled. There’s an unanswered call on his cell. He doesn’t call her back, instead flags a cab to get home.

Some part of him expects her to be waiting at his place, and is almost disappointed when he comes home to an empty apartment. If he knows her at all, she’s trying to respect his – unspoken and assumed – wishes and give him space. It wouldn’t be like her to stay away or withhold affection because she’s pissed. He doesn’t even know if she is. She’s the one who keeps apologizing.

And yet, he still doesn’t call her back. She had offered to drive him to the hospital, wait, take him back, the whole dance, but the truth is, he didn’t want her there. The surgery, the splint, all of it acts as a constant reminder, and he’s not ready to have her see him like this. Not hurt – they’ve seen each other in pain and on the mend so many times. This is different, though; this time it’s an injury he stupidly inflicted on himself. While he‘d been writhing underneath her, asking, fucking _begging_ for the very things that life keeps throwing at him anyway. What kind of person does that? Needs it, even, _makes_ their partner do that to them as a stress relief?

He spends the next couple of hours in front of the TV, watching afternoon talk shows turn into animal documentaries and generic crime dramas. The painkillers they dosed him up with in the hospital wear off, and he regrets not getting his prescription to follow them up. This kind of pain is far from fun, it just _hurts_ , and he should probably be glad about that. Lowers the chances that his wires have all been crossed and he’ll pop a boner the next time someone’s got a gun to his head. Which, knowing his luck, shouldn’t be too far into the future.

Sometime after sunrise he manages to drift off despite the pain, but wakes again before it’s fully morning. He gets up to make fresh coffee, takes the pot out of the maker to rinse it and refill, and finds his faucet only spitting once. Not a new problem, and one he knows how to solve himself. Happens on occasion, and hey, if the circus taught him one thing other than outstanding aim it’s creative do-it-yourself. He gets his tools – a mismatched set of screws and wrenches and pliers that would have any actual home improver run away in shame – and gets to work, taking the piping apart to clean it and put it back together again. Halfway through he forgets that he’s handicapped right now, absentmindedly reaches for the wrench with his injured hand and all but howls with agony as the weight of the tool drags at the bone that only just got stapled together. In his wrist, his _hand_ – the one he risked for something as trivial as an orgasm. The one he’s still risking, because he’s too proud and too stupid and too embarrassed by how he got it hurt.

Hysterical laughter wants to bubble up in him as he lies there underneath his kitchen sink, blinking back tears from the sudden intense pain that’s shocking his nerves, and it takes all the discipline his sleep-deprived, not sufficiently drug-addled brain can scrape together to swallow it down. He breathes through the worst of it and gets up, careful not to aggravate his wrist again, and goes to retrieve his phone.

Natasha answers on the second ring, saying his name, drawn out like a question.

“Yeah,” he replies, closing his eyes at the sound of her voice. “Sorry I didn’t call back earlier. I just... do you want to come over? I could use your help.”

 

***

 

For the next couple of days, whenever she’s alone, Natasha puts the internet on her private laptop to its traditional use and looks up, well. Sex. The kind of sex they’ve been having lately, or more to the point, everything she can find about ways to have it safely. It’s a bit of an _in case_ , seeing how she’s not even sure he’ll want to keep having it, but either way, they’ll need to talk about this, and she does like to come prepared for all possible turns a conversation might take. Especially if it’s something so important as this: his well-being, mentally and physically, and what’s between them.

She broaches the subject over paperwork – Stark Industries isn’t SHIELD, but Pepper’s care for proper documentation rivals Coulson’s, and they’re still working under Maria Hill. Some things never change, even if you pin different names to them. It’s not planned, she made a point of not timing this, just waiting for the right moment. When they shuffle papers around in her living room and she touches his arm, incidentally, watches him flinch away ever so slightly before he manages to catch himself, she knows she’s found it.

“Are we going to keep pretending you don’t do that?” she asks, eyes still focused on the form she’s filling out. “Or are we going to talk about it?”

He doesn’t insult her by trying to pretend he doesn’t know what she means. “I’d say we keep pretending, but that’s not gonna fly, is it?”

Looking up to meet his eyes, she slowly shakes her head. “No. It’s not.”

“What do you want me to say?” He leans back, sets aside his own stack of forms and printed reports. “We had a good thing going there, and then I screwed it up and now everything’s weird.”

And of course that’s how he’d see this. Like he spoiled something fun, and did it all on his own. “You didn’t screw anything up. Jesus, Clint, is that really how you see it?”

“Well.” He shrugs his shoulders, failing to make it nonchalant. “I’m the one who managed to cry his way through sex.”

“You didn’t cry your way through _sex_ ”, she replies, fighting to keep her voice level as his eyes do fall away from hers in what she assumes is shame. “If anything, it looked like you cried your way through a flashback. Possibly a panic attack.”

At the last words, his gaze snaps back up. He stares at her, expression unreadable, then pushes his chair back. “You know what? Changed my mind. I don’t want to talk about this.”

With a few long strides, he’s by the door. That’s a new habit of his, running away like this, and one she’s quickly grown to hate. She’s not going to let him do it anymore. “Don’t you dare walk out on me again.”

He freezes, but doesn’t turn. His back heaves with an inhale, uninjured left hand turning into a fist by his side. Several seconds tick by before he does swing around. “I don’t know what you want from me. Do you want me to apologize? Cause I did that, more than once. Do you want me to admit that whole thing was a mistake and that we shouldn’t be doing it again? Fine. You got it. Let’s forget about it and move the fuck on.”

It’s quite astounding, how spectacularly he can miss a point if he really tries. She suppresses a sigh, knows he’d interpret it the wrong way, feel attacked, maybe use it as an excuse to get indignant. None of that would get them anywhere right now. Time to get to the point. “Do you want to do it again?”

There’s a whole avalanche of emotions mirrored on his face as he works through that; she suspects he either didn’t think that was an option or hasn’t yet managed to make that decision for himself. After a moment, he nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

She rises to her feet as well, wants to go over to him, wants to touch, soothe, offer comfort, but then she remembers what made her start this conversation in the first place. “Good. I want that, too. But only if we make a few adjustments.”

Clint cocks his head at her slightly. “Adjustments?”

“Safety measures,” she starts, watching him for a reaction. He’s still holding her gaze, has unfurled his good hand and is now using it to beat a rhythm onto his thigh, shallow movements, a valve for tension. At her hesitation, he nods for her to continue. “I know that this is about riding a line for you. I get that. But you have to give me the tools to pull you back from the edge if I feel like you’re in danger of tipping over. We’ll need rules. I need to know your limits, and I need you to understand that you’re allowed to have them. We have to find ways to communicate, during.”

“Okay,” he says, an unexpected glint of amusement in his eyes. His hand stops moving, flattening out against his thigh instead. He takes a step forward, a grin spreading on his features. “You mean safewords and all that? Nat, be honest. Did you _google_ this stuff? Because you sound like a sex ed website.”

“Maybe.” She rolls her eyes, but smiles back. Sits down, points at the space next to her so he’ll do the same, waits until he does. “So tell me. What do you think went wrong?”

He reaches for her hand. She offers it, palm up, twines their fingers together, and he leans back. It causes him to break eye contact, but she’ll let him get away with that if it’s what he needs to do in order to talk about this. “The slap, obviously. And the blindfold. Not being able to see you, it made things... too intense? No, that’s the wrong word. Intense is good. But I guess I forgot where I was. _When_ I was. That I was with you.”

She remembers the look on his face, the panic. She’s not sure she wants to think about where exactly he went instead, what he remembered. “So taking away your sight is out. What else?”

“I don’t know.” His injured hand comes up to rub at the bridge of his nose. “Can’t we figure that out as we go?”

Tempting as it is to take the short cut, all that’s doing is set them up for another incident. It’s possible they won’t be able to cover everything beforehand, especially not with the landscape of triggers both of them surely must have acquired over the years and might not even know about, but running into this without premeditation and hoping for the best is what got him hurt. “No. We can’t. We don’t have to talk about everything tonight, though. Think about it, and tell me when you’re ready.”

“Okay.” He shifts, turns his head to meet her eyes again. The _thank you_ isn’t said, but it’s clear enough on his face. ”I will.”

“Alright then.” Natasha squeezes his hand, uses it to pull him forward and make him sit upright before she disentangles their fingers. She gestures at the papers still strewn all over the table. “Back to less exciting topics. Let’s get this done.”

He glares at her, all mocking and exaggerated disdain, but does reach for the stack he discarded earlier.

 

***

 

Natasha intercepts him as he’s leaving Pepper’s office – medical red tape, turns out even certified so-called superheroes have to hand in notices if they go on sick leave – wearing a wicked grin and casual clothes that leave no doubt she’s not here to work either.

He stops right in front of her, looks her up and down, cocks an eyebrow. “Here to take me home?”

“Nope,” she says, wrapping a hand around his arm and steering him towards the elevator. “I’ve got other plans for the rest of the afternoon.”

“Do I want to ask?”

She shakes her head, pressing the button for the ground floor once they’re inside. “You could, but it wouldn’t get you anywhere. I’m not going to tell you, not until we’re there.”

Knowing that there’s no way he’s going to tease hints out of her she doesn’t want to give, he refrains from inquiring further. Once outside, she leads them to her car and gestures him inside, and the grin never leaves her face while she navigates out of midtown, towards the outskirts of the city. Their surroundings turn rural, maybe a half hour drive. When he sees the first hand drawn sign advertising a small, run of the mill circus, he doesn’t pay it any mind. It’s not until she’s followed the third sign pointing in the same direction that he’s starting to smell a rat. A colorful one, it turns out, with clowns running around to sell candy and animal cages and a faded-out big top surrounded by trailers and smaller tents.

She parks and leans back in the driver’s seat, head leaning against it, still grinning, although with an edge of apprehension. He nods towards the tents. “What are we doing here?”

“I figured we deserve an afternoon off. You know, doing something fun that involves neither guns nor a couch. Or a bed.” She says that with a straight face, and he can’t help but grin back, much as he wants to play at having been kidnapped unwillingly and being appropriately appalled by that. Her posture relaxes further, and she reaches out to put her hand on his thigh. “Do you remember, not long after you brought me in? You talked about when you were a teenager, silly little stories about babysitting for ventriloquists with creepy dolls in their trailers and making out with the ropedancer’s daughter.”

Yeah, of course he remembers that. He’d been sitting with her, trying to distract her from the knowledge that the large mirror on the side of her room had been a two way and there was a herd of doctors and psychologists watching their every move. There’s no need to confirm it out loud; she can read him well enough to know they’re thinking about the same thing.

“Whenever you talked about it, then and later, you had this look on your face. Like the memories made you happy?” Her eyes narrow, and the slightly apprehensive edge to her expression makes a comeback, like she’s not entirely sure she put the clues together the right way. “I just thought, I don’t know, I’d bring you home. Sort of, anyway. With everything that’s been going on, in general, and between us, we could use a few new good memories.”

With a glance towards the gathering crowd, a mix of circus people trying to cheer on their audience to get them excited, young couples, and parents with their children, he leans over to kiss her. She wouldn’t know about how that chapter of his life ended, not all of it anyway, but she’s right about one thing: for a while, it was home, and as close to a happy childhood as he ever got.

They part and get out of the car to buy their tickets and join the crowd. The show’s pretty standard, a few laughs, a few sensations, and afterwards they sneak off between the trailers like two teenagers refusing to go home quite yet. It’s early evening, not quite dark out, but the sun’s already vanishing from a cloudless sky, and Clint finds himself on the lookout for an abandoned trailer, one that gives off the impression that its inhabitants are still busy cleaning up after the show. He pushes her up against the rusty metal and chipped paint of the old caravan he picks, looking up to gauge her expression as he sinks to his knees in front of her. She glances around, checking herself that there’s no one else in sight, but gives him a small nod, and he undoes the button and zipper of her jeans, pulls them down just halfway to her thigh. Her panties follow and then he’s on her, sliding the fingers of his uninjured hand through the wetness between her legs while already artlessly nuzzling against it. Somewhere to their left a trailer door creaks and Natasha gasps, but whoever it was either doesn’t see them or pays them no mind and he keeps going, licks at her while he lets his hand wander upwards to her hip, her stomach. She catches it, laces their fingers together as she puts her other hand at the nape of his neck, directing his movements, familiar shorthand for _here_ and _more_ and _don’t stop_.

Before long she’s coming, the muscles in her thighs shuddering against him, and when he looks up he sees her head tilted back, biting her lips as she struggles to keep silent. He can see the bright, multicolored fairy lights from the tents in the distance, framing her face, and his senses are filled with the the smell of sawdust and popcorn and _her_ as he rises to his feet, pulling her jeans and underwear up as he goes.

It’s going to make a truly great memory.

**Author's Note:**

> In addition to what's tagged, there's some mild pain kink going on, too, though that's not the main point, and implied fear kink. The fact that they're not doing this safely and without the necessary precautions actually misfires this time, which involves a flashback due to the lack of an established safeword and causes an injury.


End file.
